For the scenes in which Tyrone Purvis (Danny Glover) is playing the piano, the close-ups of his hands were performed by Henderson Huggins, a Tuscaloosa, Alabama-based pianist and piano tuner. Huggins, who has been blind since childhood due to glaucoma, got the job when the movie's director and producer team of John Sayles and Maggie Renzi received a tape of Huggins from the Alabama Blues Project, a Tuscaloosa organization dedicated to musical education and the preservation of the history of Alabama Blues.